


After

by blithelybonny



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 14:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1188102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithelybonny/pseuds/blithelybonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a singularly odd sensation to grieve when one is intangible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2014 "My Bloody Valentine" Mini-Fest at HP Dark Arts on LiveJournal.
> 
> Additional warnings: discussion of a Judeo/Christian afterlife and a student/teacher non-explicit relationship.
> 
> The Harry Potter universe belongs to J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic/Warner Brothers. I am not making any profit off this work of fanfiction.

I never believed in the afterlife, aside, of course from ghosts. I suppose I should rather say I never believed in the concept of heaven as an actual place until I arrived here. I certainly never expected that my many misdeeds would be outweighed by the good I attempted to do. Forgiveness truly is a powerful, powerful tool. I shouldn’t say _tool_ ; that cheapens it. It’s hard to say what I mean. I never realized the limited scope of language until after I no longer had need of it.

I have not met God. I should like to, someday, if I am deemed worthy. For you see, there are levels in heaven, just as there are on earth, and as God is, I’m told, frightfully busy, mostly with sport, I imagine it will be some time before I can take a meeting. I shouldn’t joke; it was never my strength, and neither time nor death has changed my abilities.

I spend most of my time, as most of the dead do, watching the living. What else, really, are we to do with our endless time? It isn’t as if we are interesting any longer. You, the living, remain interesting.

I watch him, mostly. I watch the others occasionally, but I cannot help fixing my gaze on Draco. He is the only person I left behind, and certainly the only person I left behind who has no one else to comfort him.

My love for Draco is not like my love for Lily. It is different, but no less substantial, and certainly no less a great and terrible loss. In fact, I might say that the loss of Draco’s love is worse because it might actually have stood a chance to grow, had my life not been taken away from me.

And I say ‘is’ because love does not end when death comes for one of the lovers. ‘Til death do us part’ is not in any way accurate, whether for the deceased or the one who remains behind. I still feel it acutely -- and I know that he does, for I watch him. I watch him, and I _see_.

I watch him speak to my portrait after a long day of classes. I hear him cry and rage at what he thinks is me -- a pathetic copy that captures only the bare hint of the man I was -- begging me to come back and make everything alright again. As if I ever made anything right when I was still alive.

I am too hard on myself, I know this. I know that I made a difference in his life. Hell, I gave him life, or at least a chance at a life, when I took on that Vow. Although now that I have time, all the time, I wonder what would have happened if I had waited. I know Albus would have offered Draco a chance at freedom. Would he have taken it?

When I watch him now, I imagine that he would have taken the chance at freedom. It occurs then, though, that had he joined Potter and the others, our relationship would never have been. Deep down, I wonder if it was an unconscious selfish impulse that kept me from letting Draco make a choice. Admittedly, the Vow would have forced me to act one way or the other, but had I just waited a few moments longer, Draco would have been able to choose what he wanted. I don’t suppose he would have chosen me. Not then. All of what we had came much later.

I watch him throughout the day; I watch as the other students shun him or bully him, and I watch as he fails to pretend that it doesn’t bother him to be so poorly-treated. He is no longer the young man who held his head high and hid his insecurities behind good breeding and vicious, cutting remarks.

I know it is probably wrong to have admired that behavior, but it’s certainly preferable to seeing him as he is now, without me there to comfort him. He has lost what made him Draco, and it causes a great ache within me to see it, when I can do absolutely nothing to stop it from getting worse. I say ‘an ache,’ but it doesn’t adequately describe what I really want to say.

It is a singularly odd sensation to grieve when one is intangible.

In the afterlife, we do not feel as we once felt on earth. I have asked others. I have even asked Black to describe what it feels like when he watches his godson moving on and living without him. I suppose that must be surprising, but as I said, in death, feelings change. Some feelings simply no longer exist: jealousy, derision, hatred. I could not hate Sirius Black anymore even if I had the desire to do so. Black also calls it ‘an ache’ for lack of a better term.

I watch Draco try to sleep, try to eat, try to maintain his high-level marks, and try to live, but he fails utterly. He tosses and turns at night; he barely takes three bites of whatever food is placed in front of him; and he gets distracted in class. He won’t make his N.E.W.Ts, even though I know that is the only reason he agreed to return to Hogwarts at all.

I wish I could do something. I wish I knew what I wanted to do. I wish I had the words for it.

Draco often falls asleep, when he can sleep, in a comfortable chair beneath my portrait in the Headmistress’s office. Minerva moved him the first few times she found him there, but she doesn’t bother any longer. I do not like that portrait, but if it’s all Draco has, then I’m glad it was commissioned.

Mostly, I miss him. I miss what we had, and I ache over what could have been. We never had the chance to express our love physically, as I was adamant about waiting until he finished school and was no longer my student. I never got to share with him what his love meant to me.

So I watch, and I will watch until the day he joins me here. I almost dare not say, but I fear that our reunion is not all that long off.

It’s certainly no time at all to me.


End file.
